Chapter 2 #3
My lips curled into a smile as my heart finally allowed it. It was a real, honest smile, my first in days. It caught me off guard, like a breeze coming through a broken window.
His father looked at me—just looked. It wasn’t as if he was trying to undress me with his eyes or figure out how to slide into my DMs. He simply saw me. He saw past my exhaustion, my trauma, my hoodie, and my grief, acknowledging the weight I carried.
Then, unexpectedly, he walked ahead and held the door open for me.
Not because I asked him to, nor because he wanted anything in return, but simply because it needed to be done.
“Thank you,” I murmured.
He didn’t reply. He just nodded like a man who had experienced that moment a thousand times before. It felt as if we had crossed paths in another life, in a hallway, during a heartbreak, or perhaps even in a moment of healing.
Eventually, we went our separate ways. However, something inside me, something small, soft, and still alive, whispered, “This won’t be the last time you meet.”
A couple of hours later, I went back to the nurse’s station to ask about getting my daddy’s food delivered. By the time I finished chatting with her, I turned the corner too quickly, my body moving on autopilot, and crashed straight into a giant wall of mahogany.
It was him.
He was strong and tall. He smelled like cedarwood, beard oil, and God’s favorite creation.
I stumbled back. “Damn, my bad—”
His voice was warm and deep, hood-educated, and wrapped in Sunday morning manners.
“You good, queen. You okay?”
I looked up.
Lord…
If grief had a nemesis, it was standing in front of me wearing an SRPD badge and a plain black tee stretched across his chest like it signed a nondisclosure agreement.
He was… fine. Not just “Instagram fine”, but real-life, tax-paying, could-fix-your-sink-and-your-spirit fine.
His skin resembled the shade of good, rich soil.
His beard was neatly trimmed but not too perfect, and his deep brown eyes were like warm coffee with too much sugar.
His energy was quiet yet powerful, like thunder that didn’t have to announce itself.
I blinked, trying to shake the fog. “You, uh… work here?”
He smirked a little. “Nah. I just came to check on somebody. I was first on scene for a bad wreck earlier today.”
My stomach clenched.
“Mama…?”
“You’re Jeanette Jacobson’s daughter?” I nodded slowly. He softened. “She’s stable. Banged up, but she’s a fighter. I stayed until they got her back from scans. I didn’t wanna leave till I knew she had somebody coming to check on her.”
I swallowed hard.
“Thank God you were there.”
He nodded. “She had a cross in her hand. She held it the whole time. I think she was praying for you.” And just like that, my legs damn near gave out.
“Come sit down,” he said gently, guiding me to the empty bench by the vending machine.
He didn’t touch me, just walked beside me like a guardian angel with tattoos and a gun license.
I sat, my hands trembling.
“Had she been drinking?” I whispered lowly to myself, embarrassed, thinking about how Mama had been struggling with the recent loss of my uncle, her little brother, who was killed during a home invasion in South Self last month.
She had not been herself and was dealing with not having her best friend in her life anymore.
“She wasn’t the drunk one,” he corrected, voice low. “But if she had been, it’s not my place to judge. My mama used to be in a lot of pain after my pops passed.”
I looked at him sideways. “You’re a cop, and you have empathy? That’s rare.”
He chuckled. “I’m a detective. Not a robot.”
“Still.”
His mouth curved into a full-blown smile then, and I swore the hallway lights dimmed like they were jealous. “I’m Elias,” he said. “Detective Elias Edmonds.”
“Jonay,” I replied, barely above a whisper.
“Jonay.” He repeated it like it was his favorite thing to say.
When I say the way he said my name made me want to throw all my heartbreak in the trash and start over, I was not lying. But I didn’t show it. I kept it together, broken but still cute. A nurse walked up and told me that Mama was asking for me. I stood up slowly.
“Thank you… for staying with her.”
He shrugged humbly. “It was no trouble. You seem like the kind of daughter worth waiting for.”
I didn’t respond; I couldn’t. My throat was too thick with emotion.
Yet, as I walked away, I felt it. There was an undeniable thump in my chest. Not from pain, nor from grief, but from something I hadn’t experienced in a long time.
Hope.
Mama looked like a version of herself I wasn’t ready to meet.
This wasn’t the woman who filled the kitchen with laughter loud enough to drown out boiling pots, who sang off-key to Al Green while pressing our hair straight, who could silence a room with one raised eyebrow and heal it again with one smile.
This wasn’t the Mama who smelled like cocoa butter and fried catfish, who wore her Sunday hats like crowns, and carried her grief and her joy the same way—loud, unapologetic, and with her back straight.
No. The woman in front of me was bruised, bandaged, broken.
Her beautiful, cinnamon-brown skin was blotched with shades of purple and gray, her lips split, her eyes swollen halfway shut.
Gauze wrapped her head and ribs; IV lines pierced the veins that once held nothing but rhythm and strength; and an oxygen mask fogged with every shaky inhale, each rise of her chest a jagged fight behind fractured ribs.
Machines beeped steadily like borrowed heartbeats, their glow too cold against the warmth that was always Mama.
Her body was still, too still. But her spirit refused to be silent. It pulled me toward her like gravity, like blood, like a voice straight from heaven whispering, “Go. Be her strength now.”
I stepped inside slowly, one hand pressed to my chest as if I could hold together the ache clawing its way out. My knees wanted to give, but love carried me forward.
And then, against all odds, Mama’s eyes fluttered open.
“Hey, baby girl.” Her raspy voice sounded like regret in a blender.
Tears welled up in my eyes before I could pretend they didn’t. “Mama…”
“I didn’t mean for you to see me like this,” she said, trying to straighten up but wincing instead.
“Don’t move. Just… breathe.”
She nodded and briefly closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she whispered, “I’m sorry I scared you.”
That was when I lost it. My knees buckled, and I collapsed on the side of her bed like my soul had clocked out. “Don’t do that. Don’t apologize. You’re still here. That’s all I care about right now.”
She stroked my hand with her bruised knuckles and whispered, “I was just trying to go for a drive and silence the noise, baby. I wasn’t even the one drinking.”
I nodded, my eyes blurred with tears. “I know. I’ve been trying to do the same.”
We sat in silence, a soft, broken silence stitched together by the unspoken language only mothers and daughters shared.
But grief had a funny way of flipping through memories like photo albums on fire. I didn’t know what triggered it, her saying sorry or just the weight of it all, but my mind drifted right back to Kam and how he’d plant seeds of doubt in my head, making love feel like a manipulation.
*Two months ago*
I was sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing shea butter on my thighs, when Kam leaned against the doorway wearing that fake concerned look that always came with conditions.
“You’re still on that birth control, right?” he asked.
I looked up. “Yeah. You know I am.”
He clicked his tongue. “You ever think maybe that’s what’s messing with your mood lately?”
“My mood?” I paused mid-rub. “You mean the mood I get into after you disappear for three hours and come back smelling like weed and Bath & Body Works?”
His jaw clenched. “Ain’t nobody disappearing. You’re just paranoid. You always accusing me of something.”
“I’m accusing you of being inconsistent, not a criminal.”
He stepped forward and sat beside me, his voice syrupy soft but still sour. “You keep pushing me away and then wonder why I don’t open up.”
I crossed my arms. “I’m scared to have a baby with someone I can’t even emotionally reach half the damn time.”
That was when his tone shifted. The icy, detached voice came out, the one that always made me feel like a burden dressed in lingerie.
“Maybe if you acted like you wanted to build a life instead of picking fights, we’d already have one.”
I blinked.
He always did that—weaponized my worries and loaded them like bullets in an argument.
“You want a baby, Kam? Or do you just want something to trap me with to make sure I don’t leave when the lies start smelling like yesterday’s clothes?”
He stood up with disgust in his eyes. “You know what, Jonay? You’re going to wake up one day old and bitter with no kids and realize I was trying to give you something real.”
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. I just went to the bathroom and cried into a towel like it could absorb both water and shame.
My mother squeezed my hand gently, grounding me.
“Who hurt you, baby?” she asked softly, her eyes sharper than I expected for someone barely able to breathe.
I looked at her, blinked back tears, and said the truest thing I had all year. “Somebody I thought loved me. Somebody I almost gave everything to.”
She nodded as if she understood the taste of betrayal too well.
“Ain’t no love that comes with confusion, baby girl. If it hurt more than it healed, it wasn’t meant to be.”
I lay my head gently on her shoulder, mindful of the bruises, and whispered, “Then I guess I’ve been unequally yoked with a demon in fake Dior then.”
The waiting room smelled like lemongrass and lavender, as if healing had a fragrance but no face. I didn’t belong here, not because I was too strong, but because if I started talking, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop.